The Communist and Nationalist Resistance

Faced with an illiterate, agrarian, and mostly Muslim society
monitored by Zog's security police, Albania's communist movement
attracted few adherents in the interwar period. In fact, the country had
no fully fledged communist party before World War II. After Fan Noli
fled in 1924 to Italy and later the United States, several of his
leftist protégés migrated to Moscow, where they affiliated themselves
with the Balkan Confederation of Communist Parties and through it the
Communist International (Comintern), the Soviet-sponsored association of
international communist parties. In 1930 the Comintern dispatched Ali
Kelmendi to Albania to organize communist cells. But Albania had no
working class for the communists to exploit, and Marxism appealed to
only a minute number of quarrelsome, Western-educated, mostly Tosk,
intellectuals and to landless peasants, miners, and other persons
discontented with Albania's obsolete social and economic structures.
Forced to flee Albania, Kelmendi fought in the Garibaldi International
Brigade during the Spanish Civil War and later moved to France, where
together with other communists, including a student named Enver Hoxha,
he published a newspaper. Paris became the Albanian communists' hub
until Nazi deportations depleted their ranks after the fall of France in
1940.

Enver Hoxha and another veteran of the Spanish Civil War, Mehmet
Shehu, eventually rose to become the most powerful figures in Albania
for decades after the war. The dominant figure in modern Albanian
history, Enver Hoxha rose from obscurity to lead his people for a longer
time than any other ruler. Born in 1908 to a Muslim Tosk landowner from
Gjirokastër who returned to Albania after working in the United States,
Hoxha attended the country's best college-preparatory school, the
National Lycée in Korçë. In 1930 he attended the university in
Montpelier, France, but lost an Albanian state scholarship for
neglecting his studies. Hoxha subsequently moved to Paris and Brussels.
After returning to Albania in 1936 without earning a degree, he taught
French for years at his former lycée and participated in a communist
cell in Korçë. When the war erupted, Hoxha joined the Albanian
partisans. Shehu, also a Muslim Tosk, studied at Tiranë's American
Vocational School. He went on to a military college in Naples but was
expelled for left-wing political activity. In Spain Shehu fought in the
Garibaldi International Brigade. After internment in France, he returned
to Albania in 1942 and won a reputation for brutality fighting with the
partisans.

In October 1941, the leader of Communist Party of the Yugoslavia,
Josip Broz Tito, dispatched agents to Albania to forge the country's
disparate, impotent communist factions into a monolithic party
organization. Within a month, they had established a Yugoslav-dominated
Albanian Communist Party of 130 members under the leadership of Hoxha
and an eleven-man Central Committee. The party at first had little mass
appeal, and even its youth organization netted few recruits. In
mid-1942, however, party leaders increased their popularity by heeding
Tito's order to muffle their Marxist-Leninist propaganda and call
instead for national liberation. In September 1942, the party organized
a popular front organization, the National Liberation Movement (NLM),
from a number of resistance groups, including several that were strongly
anticommunist. During the war, the NLM's communist-dominated partisans,
in the form of the National Liberation Army, did not heed warnings from
the Italian occupiers that there would be reprisals for guerrilla
attacks. Partisan leaders, on the contrary, counted on using the lust
for revenge such reprisals would elicit to win recruits.

A nationalist resistance to the Italian occupiers emerged in October
1942. Ali Klissura and Midhat Frasheri formed the Western-oriented and
anticommunist Balli Kombetar (National Union), a movement that recruited
supporters from both the large landowners and peasantry. The Balli
Kombetar opposed King Zog's return and called for the creation of a
republic and the introduction of some economic and social reforms. The
Balli Kombetar's leaders acted conservatively, however, fearing that the
occupiers would carry out reprisals against innocent peasants or
confiscate the landowners' estates. The nationalistic Geg chieftains and
the Tosk landowners often came to terms with the Italians, and later the
Germans, to prevent the loss of their wealth and power.

With the overthrow of Mussolini's fascist regime and Italy's
surrender in 1943, the Italian military and police establishment in
Albania buckled. Albanian fighters overwhelmed five Italian divisions,
and enthusiastic recruits flocked to the guerrilla forces. The
communists took control of most of Albania's southern cities, except
Vlorë, which was a Balli Kombetar stronghold, and nationalists attached
to the NLM gained control over much of the north. British agents working
in Albania during the war fed the Albanian resistance fighters with
information that the Allies were planning a major invasion of the
Balkans and urged the disparate Albanian groups to unite their efforts.
In August 1943, the Allies convinced communist and Balli Kombetar
leaders to meet in the village of Mukaj, near Tiranë, and form a
Committee for the Salvation of Albania that would coordinate their
guerrilla operations. The two groups eventually ended all collaboration,
however, over a disagreement on the postwar status of Kosovo. The
communists, under Yugoslav tutelage, supported returning the region to
Yugoslavia after the war, while the nationalist Balli Kombetar advocated
keeping the province. The delegates at Mukaj agreed that a plebiscite
should be held in Kosovo to decide the matter; but under Yugoslav
pressure, the communists soon reneged on the accord. A month later, the
communists attacked Balli Kombetar forces, igniting a civil war that was
fought for the next year, mostly in southern Albania.

Germany occupied Albania in September 1943, dropping paratroopers
into Tiranë before the Albanian guerrillas could take the capital, and
the German army soon drove the guerrillas into the hills and to the
south. Berlin subsequently announced it would recognize the independence
of a neutral Albania and organized an Albanian government, police, and
military. The Germans did not exert heavy-handed control over Albania's
administration. Rather, they sought to gain popular support by backing
causes popular with Albanians, especially the annexation of Kosovo. Some
Balli Kombetar units cooperated with the Germans against the communists,
and several Balli Kombetar leaders held positions in the
German-sponsored regime. Albanian collaborators, especially the
Skanderbeg SS Division, also expelled and killed Serbs living in Kosovo.
In December 1943, a third resistance organization, an anticommunist,
anti-German royalist group known as Legality, took shape in Albania's
northern mountains. Legality, led by Abaz Kupi, largely consisted of Geg
guerrillas who withdrew their support for the NLM after the communists
renounced Albania's claims on Kosovo.